Friday, February 17, 2017

ANTINOOPOLIS TOMB MYSTERY DEEPENS AS MORE BODIES FOUND IN PIT

THE mystery surrounding anINTENTIONALLY BURIED STONE STRUCTURE at Antinoopolis has deepened with the discovery of not just one ... but three ... human skeletons interred in sand directly on top of the structure.

With the discovery of the first body last week, archaeologists reluctantly speculated about "human sacrifice" ... but now they believe humans were buried separately but along with sacrificial animals.

The team of archaeologists working atANTINOOPOLIS in Egypt say the subterranean
"stone structure," which they believe may be an underground mortuary temple, is
covered by two meters of soil strewn with sacrificial pottery sherds,
bones of livestock and a crocodile ... and the skeleton of at least three human
beings.

None of the animals was mummified ... nor were the humans, says James B. Heidel, president of the Antinoupolis Foundation.

Some of the animals ... livestock ... were ritually butchered as normal for a Roman-era sacrifice. But a crocodile was buried intact, without being mummified.

But the human bodies were interred intact, also without being mummified. One of the bodies was accompanied by pottery vessels and ushabti figurines ... small clay dolls representing spirits who tend the deceased in the afterlife.

The
experts are certain that the pottery vessels and the bodies date to the earliest days
of the city which Hadrian founded at the site where Antinous died in the
Nile.None of
the pottery is later than the 2nd or 3rd Century AD, the experts said
... meaning the sacrificial offerings were made at the time when the
city was founded and under construction.The archaeologists are also certain that the site is intact and has not been disturbed by looters over succeeding centuries.They found
bones of large livestock, which appear to have been butchered prior to
burial. An intact crocodile skeleton is seen as proof that the site was
used as a religious sacrificial offering venue ... since crocodiles were
sacred to Ancient Egyptians and not a source of food.

But the human skeleton is a total mystery. In Roman
times, human sacrifice was taboo, but the archaeologists say the human
bones mixed in amongst the bones of sacrificial animals and pottery
suggest a gruesome possibility."The human
burial is sealed in the same clean sand layer as all the other
offerings, and the not unreasonable, but somewhat
uncomfortable, hypothesis must now be that at least one human was
sacrificed and offered with the animals," says James B. Heidel, president of the Antinoupolis Foundation.The
pottery and bones are in soil which covers the mystery-shrouded
"intentionally buried stone structure" which Heidel's team found in
January 2017 in the heart of the city founded by Hadrian at the spot where Antinous died in the Nile.Using
ground-penetrating radar, the experts discovered the rectangular stone
structure ... 12 by 22 meters in size ... which consists of three
successive chambers. The archaeologists suggest it could be anOSIREION... symbolic Tomb of Osiris ... raising hopes that this could be the Lost Tomb of Antinous.The structure was detected with ground-penetrating radar.

It is located near the waterfront peristyle discovered last season.

It
is within what possibly was the Great Temple of Antinous and is a
rectangular chamber which is subdivided into three sub-chambers ...
apparently an antechamber, a middle chamber and an inner sanctum.